


It's Not Easy Being Green

by booksong



Category: Kagerou Project, Mekakucity Actors
Genre: F/M, I don't know why but I had just had this feeling that drunk!Mary was something the fandom needed, Seto and Mary are the cutest help, short fluffy fluffiness for the soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 12:25:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4746410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booksong/pseuds/booksong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ah…w-w-why <i>my</i> lap, Mary?”  Seto tried fruitlessly to press his shoulders deeper into the sofa cushions to get some more distance, but it wasn’t giving him nearly enough.  </p><p>It wasn’t precisely a fair question, since Mary sat on his lap more often than not when they were together.  But that was when she was sober.</p><p>“<i>Because,</i>” Mary answered with a great seriousness that was belied by the way her luminous eyes couldn’t quite focus on him, “You’re <i>green</i>, Seto.  The greenest person here.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Easy Being Green

**Author's Note:**

> It may tell you something about me and my ship preferences that I am deeply, deeply attached to the Seto/Mary dynamic, and also that almost immediately after getting into the Mekakucity/Kagepro fandom I was seized with the desire—no, the _imperative_ —to write drunk!Mary. So here it is.

As soon as she’d realized what had happened, Kido had chased Kano around half the house and all but sat on him, and still only succeeded in extracting the story from him in bits and pieces. He hummed and stalled and snickered and was generally far too pleased with himself for her to have the patience to hear him narrate the whole thing, but she got enough to create a general idea of what had happened. 

Kano’s casual stroll back from doing errands. His spying an outdoor wedding reception in one of the sprawling parks near the river. His spur-of-the-moment decision to wander in among the guests, face masked as a well-dressed middle-aged man. His snagging little treats from the trays, and then a glass of some clear liquid. (“ _Kano!_ ” “It was disgusting, don’t worry, I put it back!”) His spying a different drink, trimmed with mint leaves and either salt or sugar (it was sugar), trying it, and deeming it much tastier (“ ** _KANO._** ” “ _Ow_ , Leader, my arm—!”). His wandering away from the reception and continuing back home, making sudden new plans for the drink in his hand along the way. His getting home to find Mary happy to help him unpack and put away the supplies he’d picked up at the store, and also predictably curious about his mint-smelling souvenir. 

“How was I supposed to know it would even affect her that much? I’m only guilty of being generous, and maybe trying to indirectly help my dense yet beloved brother, Leader,” Kano said, looking innocently wounded at Kido’s piercing, accusing stare. 

She sighed heavily and shoved her hands into her hoodie pockets, wishing there could be more quiet, ordinary evenings at their house where she could make dinner and read her book and not have to worry about what fresh chaos certain people would bring down on them. “Well, as long as it’s done, let’s at least go keep an eye on them,” she muttered, heading back toward the living room.

“Oh c’mon, you’re acting like I armed a bomb in there,” grinned Kano, practically skipping after her. “It’ll be fine, it happens to people all the time. No big deal.”

Kido shot him a _look_ over her shoulder. “ _You’re_ not the one who’s going to have to deal with her.” 

Kano’s smile grew almost predatory. “That’s the idea.”

 

“Ah…w-w-why _my_ lap, Mary?” Seto tried fruitlessly to press his shoulders deeper into the sofa cushions to get some more distance, but it wasn’t giving him nearly enough. 

It wasn’t precisely a fair question, since Mary sat on his lap more often than not when they were together. But that was when she was sober.

He had gathered, through observation and Kido’s clipped summary of events, that Mary was _not_ , at that moment, sober. And he found he was woefully unprepared for it.

“ _Because_ ,” Mary answered with a great seriousness that was belied by the way her luminous eyes couldn’t quite focus on him, “You’re _green_ , Seto. The greenest person here.” She placed one hand solemnly on his head, as if bestowing that fact upon him like a gift. 

“I…what?” Seto blinked rapidly at her for a moment and then quickly averted his eyes. He didn’t know why he was suddenly unable to make prolonged eye contact with her; he usually had no trouble looking directly at Mary during all kinds of long conversations they had. For a moment a snatch of narration from a nature documentary they’d watched the other day crossed his mind; _When nervous, many animals will avoid eye contact with creatures they consider to be a threat._

He could feel the point where each one of her fingertips rested on his scalp.

“It’s drunk logic, Seto,” Kido said blandly from the far end of the couch, flipping a page in her book. She still looked a little displeased, but she seemed to have resigned herself to letting the situation take its course, as long as everyone was together where she could keep an eye on them. “It’s not going to make sense to any of us.” 

“How do _you_ know, Leader? Maybe you’re just jealous that you’re not as green as Seto.” Kano grinned widely at them from over by the doorway; despite already having had his _discussion_ with her, he was still wisely remaining well out of Kido’s punching range. 

Mary leaned forward, and with a satisfied sounding sigh rested her head in the curve of Seto’s neck. Her hand slid from the crown of his head to rest on his shoulder instead. 

“Do you not like this, Seto?” she mumbled. Her breath smelled like mint and sugar but sharper—of course, Seto thought, Kano would have offered her something sweet that she wouldn’t have protested drinking. 

“Ah…ha…well it’s not really a question of _liking_ …” Seto tightened his anchoring grip on the sofa cushions, trying to will back the goosebumps and the fact that his heart was doing a phenomenal impression of a trapped bird at the moment. 

“It’s _my_ question, though,” Mary said firmly, sitting up unsteadily again and looking quite insistent.

“I know, but that’s not quite the poi- _ngh_ …!” Mary had shifted further forward over his thighs, and Seto resisted the instinctive urge to curl his knees up and pull up his hood the way he did when everything felt too overwhelming. He squeezed his eyes shut, but when he reopened them, Mary was still staring at him with her head slightly cocked like she was waiting for an answer. Worse, though, was the miniature avalanche of images and impressions that suddenly smudged across his mind. _Green. His own eyes, wide and amber, and then for a split second, red. The place where his skin met the edge of his shirt collar. The wayward lock of soft dark hair that framed his temple. Green, lots of green, warmth. Tingly fingertips pressed against the warm shape of his skull. The roll of his throat when he swallowed._

“ _Maryyyy…!_ ” His voice came out as more of a whine than he’d intended, and he closed his eyes quickly. “You’re thinking really loud…”

Kano started snickering. “Oh man, I didn’t even think about that part. I guess it does make sense…no filter, you know.”

Seto cracked one eye open experimentally and was immediately inundated with another muddled sequence. _A hand_ (his hand?) _weaving through Mary’s waterfall of pale hair. The feel of warm breath stroking over skin, mint and sugar mingling with something light and fresh like pine. Noses and lips following the curves of neck and jaw and—_

Seto squeezed his eyes shut so hard he saw white stars replace the flickering images. His knuckles ached from gripping the couch so tightly, but he wasn’t sure where they might go if they weren’t hanging onto something, and he couldn’t risk that. 

“Now you’re red to go with your green, Seto!” crowed Kano from across the room. Seto wished there was something within reach he could throw at him, but he would be too afraid to open his eyes to aim. 

“Mary, why don’t you give poor Seto a second to breathe?” Kido sounded exasperated that she was having to intervene, although not unsympathetic. 

Seto felt Mary turn in the direction of Kido’s voice, and sure enough when he chanced another peek she was looking away from him. Her thoughts muted accordingly to the usual easy-to-suppress hum in the back of his mind, and he almost sighed aloud with relief. 

He shouldn’t have let his guard down.

The moment Mary let her dazed attention wander back to him, instead of another flicker of images, time seemed to freeze and skip in the same instant, disorienting him more than he already was. A tiny flutter of panic went through his stomach; if Mary was accidentally using her eyes…

She didn’t seem to notice anything amiss though; there was a tiny frown on her face, but he didn’t think that had anything to do with her powers. She leaned in closer, as if trying to puzzle out some tiny detail of his face, and he noticed dimly that he literally could escape no further into the couch. He swallowed hard instead. 

“Hold _still_ Seto, you keep…floating.” Mary placed her hands on either side of his face, causing her to sway forward a little in his lap, her weight now more on his hips than his legs. Seto half-expected her to pull them back when she felt the burn of his flushed cheeks. Instead he experienced another brief skip of time, although at this point his thoughts and heart were both racing so chaotically he couldn’t have said for certain it was Mary’s power at work at all. But Mary’s hair was curtaining around them both now, and at some point either his hand had gotten away from him or her hair had wound itself around his wrist and fingers of its own accord…and it was so, so _soft_ …

His breathing sounded loud in the silence that had descended with the makeshift cocoon of her hair. 

There was no skip of time in the moment before her mouth tentatively brushed the corner of his, although he almost wished there was, because every inch of him felt like it was going to come apart from sheer nervous anticipation. Her nose skimmed his cheek and the image he’d seen moments before in her mind came back to him. 

But the clumsy press of her lips on his that came next was no stray memory or thought. It was something of a crooked kiss, due to the fact that she was holding his head with her hands and his hands with her hair and not being particularly steady about it. It lasted just long enough for the tip of his tongue to catch the sweet-sharp flavor of the drink, and for him to add her mouth to his list of things that were indescribably soft about Mary. 

“M- _Mary_ …?” he gasped hoarsely as she drew back and tucked her head into the curve of his shoulder again. His head was swimming, and he wondered briefly if it was possible to get drunk on just the taste of alcohol on someone else’s lips. 

“I just…wanted to,” she sighed against his neck, lips barely brushing the skin. Was he imagining the tiny trace of petulance in her voice?

Seto turned dazedly to Kido for some kind of reassurance that this was not a dream. The fact that she had dropped her book at some point and was staring at them with utter disbelief was a pretty good indication.

“Well,” Kano said, sounding gleeful, “I think _that_ was a little more no-filter than any of us expected.”

“Green,” Mary mumbled happily into his shoulder. “Mmmmm…sleepy…carry me…bed, Seto?”

“I…ah…” Seto groped for words. What could he say…that he didn’t quite trust his legs at the moment? It wasn’t untrue. That he didn’t quite trust himself? If he was honest…that wasn’t untrue either. He could still taste mint on his lower lip, and while Mary’s hair was no longer wound inextricably around his wrists, it was still cascading over his forearms, his collarbone, his throat. And he still couldn’t get over how it—along with everything about her, really—was so wonderfully, mesmerizingly _soft_. The kind of soft it was easy to want to lose yourself in. 

But then he turned his head a little and met one of her lidded pink eyes with his own, and caught just a wisp of thought. _Soft pillows. The warm embrace of blankets. Sure hands tucking in all the edges around her, making a safe little nest. His name, heavy with sleep and fondness and trust. The softest breath of, “G’night, Seto.”_

This, he knew. This part made sense. 

His breathing had steadied almost without him being conscious of it. Without tipping her head off his shoulder Seto turned her sideways across his lap, curled one arm under her thighs, and tucked the other around her back. His legs did not give out when he stood up, and he was proud of it.

Mary gave a soft little hum of approval, and even when she nuzzled against his throat, he did not yelp or drop her, and if his flush spread down to cover that spot, he thought no one had the right to blame him.

“Sweet dreams~!,” drawled Kano, his satisfied grin tracking them across the living room all the way to the door that led to the upstairs rooms. Seto realized as he stepped onto the first stair that he had never seen whether Kido had retrieved her book, or her jaw, from the floor. 

Mary was already mostly asleep by the time he rolled her carefully into the bed, adjusting the pillows and tucking the blankets the way she liked. She made a couple loose, sleepy grabs at the sleeves of his hoodie, but when he caught one of her hands and squeezed it firmly, she squeezed back and then let go. She murmured a couple more slurred things that might have been his name, and then her breathing evened out. 

The moment she was asleep, Seto realized he was in no great hurry to return downstairs to face Kano’s laughter and Kido’s incredulous embarrassment. And yet he had a feeling that since his heart had not completely returned to normal yet, he wouldn’t be joining her in sleep soon either.

And so instead he stretched out on his back on the bed beside her, stared at the ceiling, and thought about snakes and softness, mint and sugar and nature documentaries, red eyes and fairy tales. 

But he was asleep several hours later when Mary reached out, lost in dreams, unerringly curled her fingers around a handful of his hoodie, and whispered clearly, delightedly, “I _love_ that you’re green, Seto.”

**Author's Note:**

> *To an extent I drew on my own interpretations of how Seto experiences his eye ability for the sake of story, so if anyone feels it contradicts canon representations of it, I apologize.
> 
> *Feel free to come talk to me at my tumblr, [booksong](http://booksong.tumblr.com/), about this sweetheart frog prince and his snake princess, or just about Kagepro and anime in general! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
